½ cup raw sugar or brown sugar
1½ cups honey
⅓ cup coconut oil
¼ tsp. fine sea salt
2 tsp. vanilla extract
4 cups crisp rice cereal (I used organic)
2⅔ cups old fashioned oats
⅔ cups ground flax seed
½- 1 cup mini chocolate chips
Instructions:
In a large bowl, combine your oats, rice crispy cereal, and ground flax seed. Stir with a large spoon until well combined. Set aside.
Measure out sugar, honey, coconut oil, and sea salt and place in a sauce pan over medium heat. Bring it to a boil. Stirring the whole time, boil for exactly 1 minute so mixture combines and sugars dissolve. Take pan off the heat and add in the crunchy peanut butter and vanilla extract. Stir until smooth. Pour this Peanut buttery honey deliciousness over your oat/rice crispy mixture. Stir until well combined.
Let this mixture sit cool for about 5-8 minutes. Meanwhile, Grab a large cookie sheet or jelly roll pan sized(mine is sized at 12½ x 17½ by 1 inch), and some parchment paper. Place cookie sheet on a large piece of parchment paper and trace around the outside of it. Cut it out and place this on the inside of your cookie sheet. It should fit perfectly. This will help later to keep the granola bars in one piece before cutting up.
Remove parchment paper and cookie sheet. If you have fridge space, place cookie sheet in the fridge to finish cooling. If not, it can finish cooling on the counter just as well. Once the bars have cooled completely, slide solidified mixture out of your pan. Now take a cute knife and cut the bars into the size of your choosing. (I cut 5 bars across and 7 bars down making 35 bars total).
To Freeze: Wrap each bar in plastic wrap. Place in a freezer safe zip lock bag and freeze. In the morning, I pull out a bar and put it in my children’s lunches. By lunch hour they have thawed, becoming soft and chewy again.
